


wanted: a james joyce impersonator

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Skins (UK)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-19
Updated: 2008-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:21:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1628834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What you don't know is that she kissed him once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wanted: a james joyce impersonator

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, thank you to all that helped me out and encouraged me with this piece. Especially to S who, lol, I have to scrounge up the XMAS cash for something big and shiny for the major support. ;p And to MissMercy, of course, I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Written for MissMercy

 

 

What you don't know is that she kissed him once.

Just once, and it was a long time ago. It was the two of them on the couch, alone in that house that wore Angie's name written into the walls; he laughed too, when she told him, seriously, that it wasn't a _healthy_ thing as she almost meant it herself. But desperation is desperation and if anything, the two of them understood that the best.

She remembers too, just his knees, and she remembers then, just the weight of his hands. How they pressed and pressed and _pressed_. She remembers Chris, just the way he tasted, and half-high, his mouth opening into a smile over hers, sucking away the very last memory nearly she had of everything else.

 _I won't tell Jal_ , he said.

\---

It rains, mostly, her next days in the city. Late always, the drops fall hard from the sky; they open into the lights, over the arch of her chin, and spill quickly over her jacket as she heads down to the diner. The summer heat is coming and going, lost to the promise of the seasons that are standing. Winters here are a curiosity to her, to the stories that her dad did tell, once when she was growing up to be a little something more.

The weight of her jacket is growing, wet and heavy over her shoulders. She straightens, and then slouches. Her shift usually opens in the afternoon, to the waking hours and the occasional tourists that stumble in after a wrong turn to ask, "Well, what's good here?" as if Cassie had known they were going to come all along.

She doesn't mind it much.

Today, though, she's walking slowly. The lights around her are dimming, the sky melting into the tops of buildings, and the bridge swaying the distance. She plays a game with the passing cabs, the stark yellow that turns into every corner, hovering to wait as if she were important after all. The city takes to them too, the lines of people and cars melting and rearranging to their favor.

It's just like one, large postcard. The glossy feet that patter behind her follow along in car horns and the occasional laugh. You can be late _today_ , she remembers. She loves it less as a home, more as an escape, and better as something to hide from the rest of her weights, not the food but the attachments she's brought.

What was it that Adam didn't say?

_Try and stay._

\---

Everyday, her hands wake to her leaving.

There is never any freedom to the pictures in her head, to the small flat that she'd rather be in, and to the company she carried with and without any qualms to who she was. She remembers the holiday lights, the time that they spent hours stringing them against the wall, over the arches and molding, into their bedrooms and along their feet.

"Do you like me?" She asked him once.

By then, he was only pale and the color of his mouth, slowly seeping out, could still surface for her. It became those moments, she used to think, that she'd never dream of trading. Important. Not for Sid, not for the others. Selfish or not, they were hers.

"Yeah," always honest, he nodded. "I think I do, Cas."

\---

The postcards fit better in her pockets, two for dad and one, maybe, for Sid if she's up for the occasional _hello!_

Her bag digs over her shoulder though, walking her back to the apartment - not a _flat_ , Adam told her. Her accent was always endearing. Stay, stay, stay. She's not used to this still, that kind of hospitality, the one that was never open to her or, if anything, she fucked herself away from it being anywhere near possible. But she is alone and with that, everything seems much larger and much heavier over her head.

It's stopped raining though. 

Half of her wants to walk to Broadway, to see the lights and watch them dance. But she's tired, her fingers sore and tight from orders and _hellos_ , the crowd of foreigners - _tourists_ , she reminds herself - were much larger for today's service. Her cheeks are dry, the long arch of her jaw tight and nearly begging for some sort of relief. Her mouth aches as well, weary from the smiles and loneliness, if anything, from doing it too hard. Cassie doesn't really smile. She _misses_ London. She misses her excuses. She misses the rise and fall of new starts. Here, she has to do it.

The walk, however, remains on course. She has no one to say hello to. Her eyes are open, never wide, but enough for a friendly glaze; someone once asked her where she scored once and confused, Cassie just walked way. There's nothing in that for her anymore and after leaving home, leaving him, she wonders if it's really meant to be the same. Does she want it to be? She doesn't know. She's never known. It's what she does best of all.

She follows the lights down the sidewalk, her boots scuffing over the shadows as they laugh and dance. They spread to tease her away from her intentions, gliding into the streets and all directions. Instead her mouth picks up a hum, soft and distant, cutting through a set of stairs and straight into an alley. She walks faster in the dark, her shoulders loose and inviting since there's no one to care. It's brick. It's stone. But everything is too quiet, too straight, and she makes it to the other end, to her place, without any time to lose.

There are keys in her pocket. Spares, said the note. _Good_ spares. They are shiny and gold, as if meant to only be a ring. She doesn't love Adam. If Adam, really, was his name. He didn't love her either. She wasn't surprised. No longer a prince, or a step to a loss, whatever that's supposed to mean. She does let herself into her place - her place, if anything, sounds too funny to say out loud, alone, she says, instead, "Adam's place!" as a guest and as she's meant to be.

Her bag drops loudly.

There's still no one to greet her.

\---

He's there, when her eyes open.

His mouth tilts into a smile, washing sleep away. The sheets wrinkle and moan under his weight when he sits on the bed. She doesn't say anything, her throat drying as her fingers curl and clutch at the blankets that she does have; the dream, she reminds herself, it's only, again, _another_ dream.

"Hiya, Cas!"

His voice is thicker than she remembers, the way it tilts and grins along with his mouth. He leans forward too, pressing the pad of his finger into her nose and then pulling away. He chuckles. She's guilty, when she laughs and it breezes into the small nook of the room, opening into the high ceilings.

"You're dead, you know," she says shakily. "I would say hello, but you're _dead_. I left you there, you know. Don't you? I didn't tell anyone. I didn't tell anyone and I left. I left you alone."

She brinks on hysterics, the crush of her own fragility, and the taste of it all flutters against the roof of her mouth. Sweat lingers, crawls along her throat, and she's suddenly hungry, very hungry. There's a fridge, in the corner and by the bed, filled with apples. Beautiful, beautiful apples. Adam only ate the green ones. Cassie lets them rot.

"Hiya Cas," he says again and it's _Chris_ , the Chris she knows; solemn and priced, fighting a grin as he sits straighter and reaches for her hand, pressing his palm over her fingers. His eyes are kind, eerie, and his hair flips and falls to hide them, letting them disappear. She feels the weight of his palm, but she doesn't understand why he's here or how he's here because she saw him, she saw him crack and sputter the rest of his life away.

She trembles then. And her hand, shifting, turns her palm into his. She feels the lines in his skin, twisting over hers as he nods, only to confirm, what her suspicions could be. She just doesn't hear them. She doesn't know how to hear them. Sid never taught her. She never thought to learn either.

"Why aren't you dead?"

He shrugs, without answers. He's dead, of course. "Dunno. S'one of those things, I guess. I suppose you have a better answer than I do - I'm not making any sense, aren't I? S'nice place, though. Better than ours - one of your artsy fellows? Where's Sid? Jal used to like those fellows, but she met me." 

The laugh bubbles inside of her throat and spills, launching her into his arms. Her mouth grins. He feels so, so _real_ underneath her and they fall back, backwards into the bed as she laughs, again and again, louder and presses her mouth into the length of his throat. She sucks lightly at his skin, to taste even if it's nothing, and lets her fingers curl in his jumper, just to feel, as his fingers come along and curl in her shirt and the sheets that tangle over her back.

He says something else, but she's not listening to him, pressing her ear into his chest and trying to find a beat. Her mouth is already humming, loud and soft, loud and soft; it feels almost euphoric, like the first time she felt the weight of her own pressures and how she could just forget them. It's like the first time she got high. It's the first time she could've been _happy_. Her mouth soaps too, along the collar of his shirt, and then she breathes, her eyes closing.

"It's okay, y'know."

His fingers tip into her hair, drawing along the lines that fold into her shoulders. The touch is starting to fade, slow and swaying, pressing against her neck but suddenly not there. She's pretending, she thinks. Her eyes are closed tightly as she thinks of the lights outside, the way the laugh and dance, like children and rats walking behind the music to a cliff.

"No," she murmurs finally. "It's not."

\---

When sleep lets her eyes open again, he's gone.

She's folded into the bed, over her stomach, and knotted into the sheets by the bridges of her fingers. She smells faintly of the diner, washed into the tips of her hair, and her mouth, dry, stays only to a familiar taste. 

The city never really lets her sleep.

\---

What you don't know is that she kissed him _again_.

The couch was pressed underneath them, curving into the form of her hip and over the weight of his arms. She thought about fucking him over Jal's jacket, straight into the clothes that she had from Sid, if only to carry the smells of the people that they loved. Cassie liked being angry.

His fingers tangled easily into her hair though, his mouth spilling into hers as if he were passing some proverbial torch; he tasted like breakfast, their morning, and the last cigarette that was left by Sid in the kitchen. He was high. She was high. He was supposed to _get_ it. She tried to suck the smoke from him and he pressed a hand between her legs instead, rubbing shakily like a little boy.

"It could've been me, right? You could've loved me?" and she asked him, if only because she could, arching her hips hard into his.

He grunts and groans, his eyes glassing over, and she wondered, too, if he fucked the same way. Again. It was almost like they were kids. There was a smile too, over her mouth and then into her hair, his fingers tightening into her side and close.

 _Yes_ , he never said. _Yes_.

\- _this_ is why she still carries him around.

 


End file.
